Chile: Wow & Ow (Day 14)

Norte Patagonia 

I woke up in the dark to the sound of a Ford 150 truck spinning out at regular intervals the room over. The man who had come in with his wife carrying motorcycle helmets. Adventurers. A rolling over and then a large resistant zipper was being noisily drawn up and down…. I stuck earplugs into my brain and amazingly fell asleep again. 

We were staying at a nice lodge in Enseñada, at the edge of Lake Llanquehue, and road signs were now saying “Patagonia Norte”. When we had arrived yesterday at the lodge, we were spoken to softly in English, were requested to take off our shoes, and were given squishy crocs to wear. The floors were gorgeous wood. The lodge keepers all had intricate forearm tattoos or were wearing drapey sweat pants. What was included in breakfast? “Coffee, eggs, bread, and jam. The jam is from the plums from our tree, which we make ourselves,” they said with great import and reverence. Jen and I made our way to our third-floor room, all slanty ceiling and tree-house, past hallways of inexplicable art made from sticks, wool, and other natural materials, and giggled to ourselves that we were probably joining a cult. “Next you’re going to help make the jam, and you’re going to LIKE it” Jen said, and we kept laughing.  

[The wonderful thing about Jen is that we are laughing every day. Especially when things don’t work. She says something descriptive and light and we just laugh. For instance, with two loud barking dogs, “that one dog is yelling at the other dog, ‘you can’t poop there!’” Or, when her chain falls off, “well the good thing is that didn’t happen on a hill!” Or when we’re low on food, “well, the good thing is my panniers have so much space for when we get groceries next!” Many sentences start with “the good thing is”. She’s a very healthy influence for me.]

The reason this soft-crocs-wool-art place stood out is because it’s the first time that we’ve heard perfect English this whole trip. It felt surprising. And the first time there were other non-Chilean family tourists, like the motorcycle adventurers. Also an aloof German couple drinking wine, wearing superior quick-dry clothing and name-brand sandals. 

It feels like we have crossed a border into a new realm, leaving the family lake beaches and ice cream time of the Lake District and entering something more rugged, upscale, and adventure. A realm with volcano climbing opportunities, huge shiny Ford trucks replacing rattling chipped Toyotas, and high-end adventure tourists seeking skiing trips or road-tripping to the deep windy south of true Patagonia. 

After breakfasting with that reverent plum jam, our ride went south from Enseñada along a mostly-quiet paved road through boulevards of bamboo and tall trees, the road a shady tunnel. On climbs, I kept awkwardly looking backward on the bike to take in the majestic and gobsmacking volcano Osorno behind us, looming huge and white-capped and unbelievable. I leaned my bike up against a roadsign that read “Patagonia norte” for a photo, and got chills for the sense of place. Dipping somewhere that you’ve heard about and has had a mystical, far-distant sense to it. Patagonia! I was here! 

[Aside: deep in Patagonia there are mega winds, few services, and wild mountains; we are only going one millimeter in before turning back up north] 

Then we continued to ride inside a Fjord. I learned there are only a few countries with fjords, and Chile is one. Tall cliffs bordered bright blue water and the road curved deliciously up, down, around and we swooped along it. Pointy peaks, square peaks, snow-covered peaks, there was just so much glorious topography to take in. 

We found a closed cafe with covered outdoor picnic tables next to the fjord, and set up our picnic lunch station. Shade! Views! A cilantro-cheese-mustard-honey sandwich! [they get weird, okay? but they’re amazing] How is this day so good! I had an unplaceable itchy little feeling that this goodness was too much and how could I possibly take it all in? 

WELL. 

After lunch the beautiful smooth pavement turned to gravel. I love riding gravel. But only on a proper gravel bike with wide, low-pressure tires and non-twitchy handling. Greenie Meanie, my ever-suffering steel touring bike, did NOT fit those qualifications. The gravel was big and loose as grapes, with many plums as well. Front wheel would hit a rock, you’d jostle sideways, right yourself, try to point straight, and the bike would jump from under you again. The butt and hands take many abuses as you jar along. 

The One Good Line was right down the middle of the road. The sides were steeply cambered with all the loose rocks gathering on the edges in fluffy piles, and without great concentration and luck you’d slide sideways into a sea of stones. 

The problem was: all those fancy adventure tourists with their Ford trucks and capacious car-top carriers were driving on this road. Swirls of dust rose behind the cars and covered us; we had buffs pulled over our mouths for breathing. I sneezed like a cannon three times, the kind of sneeze where you buzz for a bit after. That night I was rolling brown goo from the innermost part of my eyes. 

I let a little air out of my tires to attempt to be less jittery. This actually helped a bit, going from Awful to only Bad. With the increased confidence, I was able to descend a little faster on the loose gravel. 

Car appears, you clatter out of the middle, sometimes fully stopping till the swirls of dust subside and you can see again. Progress was achingly slow. 

Then on a loose slope, the bike sliced sideways out from under me and I crashed landing hands and knees. People immediately stopped, rapid-fire Spanish, someone pulled the bike off me, another guy poured a bottle of water on the cuts and scrapes on both legs. The water was running into my shoes which was not what I wanted but the dust came out. And this is one reason why you wear bike gloves! I still had whole palms. My right knee was pretty banged, but the rest was only scrapes and bruises.  

Then began one of the longer 10 miles I’ve ever ridden (I’ve lived long enough and done enough of this crazy stuff that it takes plenty to set a record). I grimaced along with the knee rotating grumpily with each pedal stroke. Now fully dismounting for every car passing, standing dejected roadside over my bike. 

I guess this is a Patagonia adventure, huh? epic and rugged with some rocky dirt in your leg. Ow. 

Eventually and gratefully we made it to our cabin, which was perfect, and directly under this amazing glacier. I stacked a pile of pillows on the couch (yes glorious couch!) and with the large door open, sat there with frozen mixed veggies on my knee, admiring the glacier and feeling deliciously relieved to be Arrived. 

I heard faint footsteps outside, and with little hesitation a chicken walked into the cabin. How bizarre and wonderful, all of this! She inquired behind the chair, poked behind the couch, and pecked about under the table. Then she saw herself out.  I laughed the whole time. 

Our cabin was on a large flat river plain area near the fjord, with wind and empty scapes. Felt a bit Wild West. A guy rode by on a horse, staring at his phone. (Don’t text and drive!) Cattle in pastures. Down a dirt street, we found a poorly stocked grocery store crowded with people, with flaccid carrots and wizened avocados.  We bought eggs—which come in any quantity you want to put in a baggie— and with our good smoked cheese from previously, we had an incredible cabin-cooked meal. With some nice defrosted and cooked mixed veggies too. 

The next morning, the sun breathed pink on the glacier and I put on my thick hat and puffy coat. Amazingly, my knee was doing well, for having stumped me around all lame yesterday. I could pedal without pain! But I still had to be careful. With the stunning mountains and the enormous sense of place, and with some healthy imperfection, the day felt quite correct indeed.

Chile: Bread & Forests (Day 12)

  

Hay Pan. 

I read that Chile runs on bread, and evidence here supports this. But it’s breads, rather. They are round, squat, you might assume they are XL English Muffins. The outside is hard and leads one to assume staleness, but inside they are soft and fresh, the sort of white flesh that is lacking in any flavor, even salt, but invites a spread of something. Men, women, children almost always seem to be carrying a bag of them somewhere. One of the most frequently seen signs outside houses and businesses is Hay Pan (“there is bread”, pronounce “aye pahn”) sometimes printed but more often written in wide marker or paint, in all-caps font like concentrating really hard to make straight letters but they’re still a little wiggly. 

We walked into a little tienda at 8:30pm (which is still daylight), with soft drinks in coolers, incomprehensible candy under the counter, shampoos on the wall, and a sizeable basket covered cozily with a blue checkered cloth. “Hay pan?” we asked eagerly. The woman turned back the cloth as if revealing a sad secret, and gravely said, “No. Hay. Pan.” It was all so gloomy, we left quickly and quietly. Outside the door, two women sat talking happily. A busting plastic grocery-bag at all angles between them, full of pan. Ah ha! 

Forest Bathing & Buenas Tardes

We’ve had some extremely lovely forest and garden bathing in addition to the biking. The botanic garden at the university in Valdivia had bike racks at the front, and not another human in sight. 

You’ve been seeing all these new plants and you don’t have a book and you have so many questions. And then at a botanic garden there are plants with labels and you can put your head back and go “ohhhh that’s in Fabaceae!!” There was not a speck of English on any signage, but Latin names and learning a few new words on Google Translate can get you far. Who knows when I’ll be able to use the word for “fern” in my day to day travels, though…(“helecho”)

Jen and I decided to split up and move at our own pace. “I feel very reverent here and just need to be in sanctuary by myself,” I told her. We were whispering outside, because that’s what felt correct. 

But it’s good that we split up because I could be found, wide of eye, mumbling to myself like someone who needed a good check-up, in a mixture of butchered Latin and Spanish. Occasionally going “OH” as some piece of plant knowledge connected. Finding a tree that was in the Araucaria genus but a different species than the Monkey Puzzle. Admiring ferns and noting some lobelia species. Many of the classics found in the gardens in Ithaca are also here: blue hydrangeas, dahlias, sunflowers. And roadside weeds like chicory, red clover, St John’s Wart. Trees like pines and poplars also give this place a sense of the northeast, except it’s the equivalent of August here. Wheat harvest is finishing, hydrangeas are starting to fade… 

In addition to the Botanic Garden in Valdivia, we stopped at a waterfall in Huilo

Huilo biological reserve. We’d been admiring the panoramic swaths of trees as we biked past, and it was wonderful to be able to enter them. We paid the small ticket fee, pushed the bikes into the trees by the parking lot, locked them to trunks, and set off on the short stroll-hike to a waterfall. This forest is a temperate rainforest, and huge drapey dripping ferns lined the paths. Little mosses on trunks and logs had us bending down to visit them. Bamboo was everywhere, occasionally growing over the trail like a roof and making a dark tunnel. Bits of chopped leaves were scattered on the trail and I imagined someone coming in with a machete every 4 hours to curtail the bamboo. 

We walked until we reached a wooden platform for admiring a tall blasting waterfall. How peaceful with this view all to ourselves. We set about pocket-knifing an avocado and balancing bread on our laps to construct sandwiches. In the time it took to get to the cheese chapter, a large Chilean family filled the entire platform. Grandma was helped up the stairs, two young boys pointed out some birds, women fluffed their hair and posed for selfies. And then the requisite family necessity at every turistica view point: “foto!” “Rapido!” “Foto!” Much jostling and arranging. 

We were part of the situation, as weird and covered in crumbs as we were. One guy handed us a little fragrant leaf, “tepa!” he announced. We enjoyed its bright citronella fragrance when crushed. Another man apparently had noticed us parking our bikes, because he made the international sign for bikes by paddling his hands around and asking where we rode from. Then he told us about his bike, and his ride on the Carreterra Austral and soon we were being shown a vast array of various photos of his rides. Nobody seemed to mind that we had avocado on our shorts. 

This is how it’s been here. The Chileans have been extremely warm and polite, interested in us but without being demanding. In Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia it was a constant barrage of “miss, miss, buy mango!”, “taxi?” — people always trying to make you a customer. Here, none of that. I wonder if it’s because Chile has a low poverty rate (actual statistics vary, but it seems just lower than in the states) or is unaccustomed to white tourists (we’ve heard no tourists speaking English anywhere). 

I’ve enjoyed all interactions with the Chileans, even with my awful Spanish. Our host woman at our home stay had a little English, and when we first arrived we were conversing about the town in English and Spanish, and abruptly she said, “would you like to eat, a melon?”  But of course! One time a hotel keeper let me use his personal phone to google how to fix a frozen iPhone, after mine had seized up and I was completely defeated— but he was so generous and the next morning even asked if my phone was still working. Another time, we biked past a group of 4 construction worker guys. You’d usually brace yourself for the expected whistles, hisses. But instead, from them in Spanish, “good afternoon, hello, good afternoon.” Amazing. 

Chile: Story of the Dog and the Nighttime (Day 9)

Here in Chile, there are un-claimed dogs all over towns, outside shops, in the street. Mid-size mutts, Golden retrievers with essentially dreadlocks, mail-box sized black dogs. They’re all quiet and sleep on sidewalk corners. Squares of cardboard with a pile of kibbles can be found on sidewalks. These dogs might sniff the bike and give you a polite inquisitive look asking if you might share your sandwich. I’ve never heard one bark. 

I am not a dog person (however, a few specific dogs I do like, looking at Charlie, Sara; RIP Wolfie). I have been chased, snarled at, and bitten on the bike. Their barking pains my ears and makes me feel anxious and mad. But I don’t mind the street dogs and one was cute enough to me I even gave it one of my cookies. 

But as soon as a dog has a person — they get barky and territorial. In rural areas, the dogs inside fences bark at us like they’re on fire. Only occasionally has one run into the road at us, and we yell it down; thankfully we haven’t been attacked yet. On a bike you are very vulnerable. 

We stayed one night at an “eco tiny house” (so-called on booking.com), in a rural area. The house had an adobo-artsy feel to it, with colored glass wine bottles as light portals, giant windows with house plants, and a wall painting that was built into the house. It was set behind another larger beautiful house, where the owner lived. Her lively black dog came to meet us as we pushed our bikes into the property. An orange and white cat regarded us from a distance. 

That evening Bike Buddy Jen and I made a lovely dinner inside. Eggs, which had implausibly arrived safely in nothing more than a plastic bag inside Jen’s pannier, a basil plant from a vegetable vendor in town (complete with roots), and tomato salad with more basil (I had saved a minuscule packet of olive oil from the flight’s airline meal and THIS was the perfect opportunity), all served with a side of basil. It was a large plant. 

After dinner we stepped outside to get our last items off the bikes, and found both cat and dog waiting for us on the stoop. How nice to have a little visit. While I fixed a flat tire, the cat rubbed against my back and purred roaringly for head scratches. The dog snuffled my tire levers unhelpfully. 

Later, after dark, I went outside again to look at the BRILLIANT stars. Orion was just standing there, with so many more buttons and adornments than ever. And the cat and dog were still there. 

The big house was completely dark. Jen figured these animals had decided we must be Their People now. 

Bedtime. After a long biking day. Sleep can come in 20 seconds and it’s so delicious when you’re exhausted. Just as I was falling into the abyss, BARK BARK. Oh no. I took my ear plugs and rolled them into torpedos. That should help. BARK BARK. Ouch. It was like he was barking inside the room somehow. I reinserted the earplugs and pushed them fully into the temporal lobes of my brain. 

BARK BARK BARK. Come on, it’s 11:20pm. I was so tired, and so near sleep, and every time he barked it was like jerking your head after falling asleep in the 2pm conference talk.  

Then I remembered something our vet had suggested for our cat for calming during carrier transport. “You can give dogs Benadryl, right?” I asked Jen. “…you can”, she said. 

I extracted myself from bed, padded to the kitchen, took a thumb’s worth from our sizable bike cheese, and got a Benadryl from my tiny “health” bag. Opened the front door. Everybody was still outside. “Hey you, want a treat?” Nom! 

I went back to bed immensely pleased with myself. 

10 minutes later: BARK. Bark bark bark. Why did these people leave their dog out in the world to disturb their guests?! 

I got up again, cheese, health bag, opened door. “Another treat?” I made this second dose a Double. Nom nom! 

And then: quiet. I had only a pinch of guilt drifting off to sleep. In the morning, though, bark bark! All is well. 

Chile: Termas (Day 5)

 So far, this is more of a “vacation” than a “bike tour”.  I had a spacious couple solo days in a busy lake beach town before my buddy arrived; there was a quad-killer hike up 3,000 ft for a pilgrimage to sacred Araucania trees, a scary ride on excruciatingly-trafficked roads and then my chain broke, and strolls around the bustling town. One short “bike tour” day was yesterday, from Lago Villarrica to Lago Calafquèn. 

Then today forecasted over an inch of rain (like, enough rain for cars to hydroplane maybe), and given the painfully narrow shoulders and impressively non-stop traffic post-morning, I did not want us to be dodging vehicles on slippery asphalt while being sleuced by trucks with maybe broken windshield wipers. All while squinting pinched-face against water driving into our faces. 

I write this nesting in a giant fluffy blanket, next to a wood stove, while rain drives against our little tree-house-like accommodation. It rained so hard over a couple minutes the ground was frothy. 

To use our rainy day, we decided to embrace Wet by doing a short ride out and back to a Terma (“thermal bath”; see, Volcanos) for a hot soak. A fancy spa-like Terma was advertised in town, with 50,000 CLP entrance fee (~$50), but we went to the no-frills locals spot instead. Amazingly, our little ride there was cloudy but not rainy, and the moment we stripped down to step into the warm pools, the rain began. We were the only non-locals, and the only boney skinny folks, save for two pre-teen boys. We must have been wildly weird looking to everyone else, but nobody gave us awkward stares or made us feel unwelcome. We were just pleasantly part of the situation. 

And what a sweet situation indeed. This was Family Time. People of all ages sat around the perimeter of a warm-water pool under a little roof from the rain. Kids and teens paddled about in the middle. Couples young and old held each other in the water, and mothers bobbed their children with many kisses. One mama had her baby-toddler encased in a full-body-floaty-table and was sliding him back and forth in the water with utmost gentleness. “That is a child that will one day be totally fine with swim lessons”, I said to Jen. (Who knows if they even do that here). The little boy had a face of utmost relaxation, like he wasn’t even aware of where he was. Half an hour later, dribbling occurred over our heads and I realized mama was carrying said boy, in nearly the same flat position, out of the pool and he was raining. 

Then another older boy paddled over and positioned himself in front of us, round-faced and dimpled with huge wet eyelashes. He said to Jen in Spanish, “do you have time to talk to me?”  Of course! He named correctly we were from Estados Unidos (he’d been scoping us out earlier) and said he himself was from Chile, from south of here. “Vacaciones?” Jen asked. “4 dias,” he said. He was hard to understand because he kept babbling in and out of the water and sliding his wet hand across his face. He was supremely interested to talk to us and very attentive. Eventually the little connection came to a close, he waved bye-bye from 1 foot away, said “ciao”, and dabbled away. 

What a sweet way to spend a day, even if not doing much biking. 

Two stories from Chile! (Day 0)

[dusts off blog]

 Hola de Chile and I have two stories for you! 

First, for those who want the Why and What: I am here to use all my vacation days, to explore the world’s longest narrowest country, to find sunlight, and to do a little bike tour with my long-time friend Jen (we were research farm interns in PA in 2010 together). We are in the middle bit of Chile, the “Lake District” which is glacial lakes and snow-dusted, looming volcanoes. (And yes, dear Matthew is at home, because his vacation trip happens in the fall.)

Story #1: Santiago 

If I had made it to the ticket counter of the next flight only two minutes earlier, it would have been fine. But after groggily making it through customs and immigration, lugging my 50 lbs of bike box, they told me I had missed the cutoff by two minutes. Other people’s travel tragedies and intricacies are not interesting, so I will spare you, but now I had an unplanned eight hour layover in Santiago airport. 

After being folded inside a tube in butt-rot conditions and barely sleeping for 10 hours, it is impressively confounding to make decisions and navigate logistics in a language you barely speak. But I used every last fiber of my being to find the luggage hold, stash my box, locate a bus going from the airport to the city, purchase a ticket, wait in line, board bus. Other people seemed to be doing this in a very normalized way but to me this was earth-shattering. 

But then it felt good to be looking out the bus window, to be outside of the airport, to see dusty roadside garbage, to be in A PLACE, and tall looming buildings. People in orange working by the road. A simple bus ride was exciting, I was in South America!

I had done zero research about Santiago and had no plans. I was supposed to be on a flight to a city in the Lake District right now. The bus came to a busy area, a sign read “Universidad” and with no premeditation I stepped off. Suddenly I was in BIG SOUTH AMERICA ENERGY. (I’ve been to Ecuador and Colombia, but wasn’t sure what to expect with Chile being such a different climate and farther south and allegedly more developed—you can drink the water here!) The smells! So nostalgic! Thrilling really. Pungent marajuana, urine so strong you want to blink, that heady aftershave that is endemic only to Latin and South America. The gluey smell of fried foods. People pushing through a crowded sidewalk. Vendors on every available corner, one was selling only large plastic egg cartons. 

According to some metrics, I did not make the most of my city visit. I spent an embarrassing amount of time walking up and down the street, trying to find from where the bus would leave to return to the airport. Taxis and many other bus companies drove by, cars belching diesel. I found a labyrinthine bus station packed with empanada vendors and dogs trotting around. Buses of all colors idled under numbered signs. Google maps was trying to show me where MY airport bus was, but I was about as dumb as a pancake from long travel and poor sleep. I finally found a small window for the airport bus and bought a ticket back.

Aside from searching for the bus, I bought Mango slices from someone and ate them with a long pokey stick trying to be out of the way of crowds. I passed many baggage stores, sunglasses for sale, leopard print hats. I dipped into a phone stuff store and purchased a portable battery block for less than half of what it cost in the airport (!). 

Boeing ending: I made my flight and was proud for navigating a slew of confusion in a foreign language. 

Story #2: Hugging Your Uber Driver 

Although I had planned to build my bike at the Temuco airport and ride the 40 miles to where I had booked a night in the Lakeside town of Villarrica, due to the flight complications, I got in at 7 PM. So I found an Uber instead. A small red stick shift car pulled up, and the driver, a good-natured, slightly round man in his late 20s, put the backseats down and slid my box in. 

I said what I usually say when I travel, to taper any expectations, “solomente tengo un poco de Español.” He grinned and said, “little English!”  “But I want to learn Spanish”, I said, in Spanish. “Learn English!”, he said. 

I noticed he had the Penn State cougar logo on his grey shorts. I pointed at my own thigh and said “su pantalones! Penn State!”  He looked confused and then I was immediately in over my head to explain… I cave-manned something akin to, “school. Nearby state. estados unidos.” He said, “ropa americana”, which are the secondhand shops in South America selling used clothes from America. I had just sent 70 KCl soil extracts to a lab at Penn State before I left, funny coincidence. 

Well that broke the ice. Next began one of the sweetest conversations, in a game of verbal Pictionary-in-the-air, as both of us floundered to speak in the other’s language with our vastly limited vocabularies. But we were willing to sound stupid and be bold to try words. 

 “What is…your color favorite?” he said in choppy English. “Verde!” I responded. That one was easy.  

We pulled out of the airport onto the main road. 

“Quantos años tiene?” he asked; here it is normal to ask someone’s age. “Come se dice?” he followed. “How old are you” I offered. “Ow hold are djou!” he said. 

We were now on a two-lane road, graceful foreign-looking trees ahead, the dimming light behind. The more he tried English the slower he drove. A line of cars built up behind us. 

Next: “what is your favorite Beet?”  Beat? “la musica?” I clarified. Nope.  “Animales” he said. Oh, pet! “Gato” I said. “Tengo una gata”.  “What is you name” he asked (I realized from butchering pronouns myself what was happening)  “Ella nombre es Gertrude” I said, and he laughed outright, “no! no!”— Gertrude, those were sounds he was not going to duplicate! 

“What is your favorite…TV?” he asked. Oh no. I have nothing there. Redirect? “Um, I like to I reading books” I said in bad Spanish. But this pushed us into impossible territory; we floundered with authors and titles the other had never heard of, with no ways to explain the intricacies of either.  

Cars passed us like we were pushing a stroller. He concentrated on finding a word and went even slower. “Come se dice, come se dice?” he said, laughing. “How do you say!” I answered. 

Then the Villarrica volcano came into view. “WOW” I said, which works in all languages. I think next he asked what am

I afraid of? But I can’t be sure. This lead to him talking, and acting out, an earthquake. “Terremoto” was a new word for me and I loved how clear it was: terre = earth, moto = move. 

My brain hurt. I so often could not gather up a Spanish noun I knew I knew, but I was oh so tired and this was oh so intense. But he was gracious, and evidently happy to be trying English. There was no judgement; just two strangers being brave about sounding stupid. 

We arrived at my Hostal. Finally, 5,000 miles from home, I could feel Destination and Relief. I gathered up the last of my Spanish capacities and rehearsed it in my head before speaking, “juntos apprendemos las languas!”, together we learn the languages. He gave me a high five and we were both grinning so much he then gave me a hug! Hugging your uber driver! How else can such bizarre wonderful human connection occur but through foreign travel. 

PS. Even though it’s been years now since we lost my Mom, and I have healed in many ways, it is much more difficult to start a blog post. She was my most devoted reader, and I knew if I spent the time writing, at least one very important person would read. So. If you are reading, I would love to know. Otherwise I’ll go back to plopping photos on instagram. 

Together we learn the languages!

My bike box outside the final destination airport, Temuco. 

Arid flowers at the Santiago airport.